[PLUG] New curated search engine: neeva.com

[Mike C.]

"Remember when Google worked surprisingly well? Google is becoming worse
than useless."

Your criticism doesn't give me much to go on for offering useful/helpful
suggestions.

FIrstly, I was curious about your idea of "search engine testing" because I
couldn't imagine how I'd go about doing this. In my search, I discovered
there are search engine evaluator jobs at burger flipper pay scale.

Then I searched for reviews of search engines and I came across this very
unimpressive, to say the least, review of Neeva.
https://www.stanventures.com/blog/top-search-engines-list/

"Neeva is a search engine developed by an ex-Google executive, Sridhar
Ramaswamy. Unlike Google, Neeva will not show ads on the search result page
or collect user data for profit.

It will work on a subscription-based model and will display search results
curated from the web as well as personalized files.

The search engine will be powered by Microsoft Bing, weather information
from weather.com, stock data from Intrinio, maps from Apple."

In my search on web search engines, I discovered something that might be
helpful. There's many alternatives to Google Search and some of them are
very focused/specialized and may produce better results. A great example is
Wolfram Alpha. IMHO, it's the goto search engine for math & science but now
they've expanded their search capability. https://www.wolframalpha.com/

I recently learned about Tineye, reverse image search, from a journalist
who used it to debunk some doctored images used as propaganda.
https://tineye.com/

I discovered that Creative Commons has a reusable content search. "Browse
over 500 million images available for reuse"
https://search.creativecommons.org/

Lastly, If I'm looking for research papers, case studies, etc, I've yet to
find a better search engine than Google Scholar. But unfortunately, much of
that information is behind paywalls. Which is a whole nother problem that
desperately needs addressing.

Well, I hope this isn't a complete waste of your time and perhaps might
offer something in your quest for a better than useless search engine.
Cheers!








On Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 6:19 PM Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:

> Remember when Google worked surprisingly well?
>
> Google is becoming worse than useless.  A recent Scott
> Galloway book (mostly about the post-COVID business
> landscape) suggests   neeva.com   - an ad-free
> privacy-oriented subscription ($5/mo) search engine.
>
> According to   https://neeva.com/blog
> Neeva announced public availability on 06/29/21 , so
> I expect gaps and rough edges.  The Neeva blog goes
> back to 06/22/20, explaining how Neeva made it into
> Galloway's recently released book.
>
> Neeva does not seem to be open source, but they are
> transparent about objectives and methods.  See
> https://neeva.com/learn
>
> The first three months are free.  I will probably sign up,
> but I would like to do so along with a larger informal
> testing team, designing tests to probe for weaknesses,
> and also unexpected strengths.  I've already become so
> resigned to Google's (and DuckDuckGo's) shortcomings
> that I've forgotten how to find best search outcomes.
>
> The more of us looking for and sharing good/bad Neeva
> outcomes, the sooner we will find them.
>
> Or not.  Neeva might be useless, or strong in areas that
> do not matter to you and me.  But more explorers can
> cover more territory.
>
> Keith
>
> --
> Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com
>